An evening breeze provided some relief from the heat of the day, gently ruffling Nausikaa's dark red hair as she sat on the edge of a rooftop looking down on Destiny City, knees folded up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. This was the first time she had powered up in a long while; the necessity of dealing with her father's death and selling her childhood home had precluded it, and after a while she simply forgot to do it. She missed her dad – he was her cornerstone after her mother died when Noë was only seven, despite his own sorrow and grief. But she needed to think about her own future now, and that included life as Nausikaa, Senshi of Empathy.

But what kind of life was it, being a Sailor Senshi in this town? For Nausikaa, so far it hadn't been great. She couldn't understand why the Order factions in this stupid war hadn't come together as a cohesive combat unit to defeat the Negaverse. It made no sense to her; she had studied enough about historical warrior cultures to know that presenting a cohesive, united force was the best and most effective way to defeat an enemy. One would think, after all the years this war with the Negaverse had been going on, that someone would have brought the Senshi together to fight as one. But no one had stepped up, not even anyone to rally around and fight for. Not even the Knights were a united fighting force, and they had the most understanding (one would think) of what it was like to be a warrior! It frustrated Nausikaa to no end, and made her very reluctant to ally with any of them. Not that anyone would – they were all too busy with their own battles, fighting the war alone.

Fools.

Her brow furrowed in annoyance as she thought about how much they could accomplish if they just got over themselves and came together as one. This city needed them to do that; the Negaverse seemed to be taking over bit by bit. They had the structure of a military to support their efforts to drain the citizens of Destiny City of their energy and relieve them of their starseeds – and their lives. She couldn't allow that to happen, but she was only one Senshi. Not a lot she could do by herself. If only the other Senshi, or even the Knights, could see that it was better to fight the enemy as an organized unit, it would save a lot of lives. And that was what was important to her – saving lives.

And also getting in a good fight. Nausikaa was the Senshi of Empathy, sure, but what good was that when facing down a youma or a Negaverse agent? You had to go in fists blazing to defeat them. And that felt pretty good, especially when she was feeling frustrated with her non-powered life or the state of Order or everything. She felt that the Negaverse agents were only following orders delivered from their superior officers and maybe didn't fully comprehend what it was they were doing, or what they were doing it for. So she had to fight them. Which she didn't mind at all, it helped her get her natural aggression out of her system. Now that she didn't have lacrosse to help with that any longer, she'd been feeling increasingly pent up with unexpressed anger at everything – her situation, the state of the city, why the idiots who were supposedly her allies didn't ally with each other and come together.

And the youma… she had no idea where those monsters came from, only that the were wreaking havoc on the city regularly, with no reason to be doing it. Why were they here? She knew the Negaverse had something to do with it, but at this point she didn't care – they were here, and they needed to be eliminated.

Nausikaa sighed and her thoughts returned to the notion of organizing Order to not only defeat the youma, but the Negaverse as well. Why hadn't someone stepped forward to lead them? To unite them in a common cause, to use these powers they had for awesome? She wasn't the one to do it, no matter how much she wanted to be; she was not the sort of beacon that they needed to rally behind. She was just one magical girl. And that was another thing that bothered her – they were magical girls and boys! They should be marvelling over that fact, enjoying their magical powers, in awe at the amazing things they could do. Like here she was, sitting on the roof of a three-story building. How had she gotten up here? She JUMPED from the roof of a two-story building, leapt across the street like it was no big deal. And she'd jumped to the roof of that other building from a standing start from the ground. That was amazing stuff! And the other things they could do – run faster than normal people, lift things that no normal person could lift, talk to cats (well, special magical cats), cast magical spells... Why didn't it seem that anyone else thought that was the greatest thing ever?

Because they were busy with their own issues, that was why. They took their powers for granted, it seemed. They could do so much more with their magic than they did. Maybe part of it too was a lack of training – and that came back to the lack of organization on the part of the Order factions. They didn't explore their powers more because they didn't know how. Nausikaa was becoming annoyed and disgruntled by this all. She felt sure there were things she didn't know about her own powers because nobody had told or shown her. And that was tremendously frustrating.

Why couldn't Order get their act together? She dreamed of a day they would.

Running under a full head of steam now, Nausikaa got to her feet. She had to get these frustrations out somehow – and that somehow was to find a youma to dust. Opening up her senses, she leapt to the next building and started to run, looking for something to fight.

(wc: 1063)